


What Was Done in Capernaum

by lindmere



Series: Passing Through [2]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:33:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindmere/pseuds/lindmere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After hooking up with Jim (once), Leonard has no idea what he wants, and Jim isn't the kind of person who makes indecision easy.</p><p>Contents include non-explicit het, explicit slash, voyeurism, and verbal description of torture, none of which are as bad as they sound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Was Done in Capernaum

“Flat is just one of many ways hair can be,” Kirk said, gesturing to the server for another round. “Open yourself to the possibilities.”

McCoy had in fact opened himself to many possibilities that evening: the possibility that a three-armed barber might be able to shave you while cutting your hair; the possibility that Kirk had dragged him to the worst bar in an already miserable spaceport; and the possibility that Kirk wasn’t going to let him leave until he at least tried to approach one of the female patrons, not all of whom appeared to be completely female.

The server returned. “Drink up,” Kirk said. “You’re falling behind.”

“ _You’re_  drinking beer.”

“ _I’m_  driving us home. I am presuming you want me sober for that.” The little spaceport, as an anti-theft measure, didn’t allow beaming. McCoy had travelled to the surface his second-least-favorite way, in the  _Galileo_ , piloted with admitted competence and care by Kirk himself. Since the whole stop was going to take fewer than 12 hours, Kirk had not ordered general shore leave. And since two of those hours had been taken up by Scotty insisting loudly and at times almost incomprehensibly that he would chain himself to the nacelles in protest if the captain allowed the shield generator to be repaired at a commercial spaceport, that left just enough time for a long-promised (and by McCoy, much-dreaded) night out.

“Hey.” Kirk nudged his elbow. “Over there.  _Don’t look_. Table by the mud pit.”

“What,  _her_?” McCoy, gazing sideways, saw a round-faced blonde, alone, poking at her drink with a straw. “She looks completely miserable.”

“Exactly! So you go over to her and say, ‘Do you hate this place as much as I do? My asshole friend forced me to come here. Let’s go somewhere quiet for coffee and talk about how misunderstood we are.’ Works every time, trust me.”

“So your dating advice is that I should take advantage of lonely, desperate women?”

“’Take advantage?’ Her friends went off to dance and she’s  _holding their purses_. It would be an act of mercy.”

McCoy took a jab at his own drink, something the bar called bourbon but that tasted more like fusel oil. “Maybe she wants to be left alone. Some people do, you know.”

“Fine,” Kirk sighed. “You can give a horse a decent haircut, but you can’t make him drink, apparently. Here,” he said, pushing his glass toward McCoy. “Hold my purse.”

Kirk stood and straightened his shirt, a pre-battle gesture that had transferred to civilian clothes, and moved toward the bar. The crowd parted for him and McCoy saw his target: a striking, dark-skinned woman in a leather jacket, sipping a blue drink.

The crowd recondensed, but McCoy didn’t need to watch to know what was happening. It was a familiar little drama, one he had seen countless times.  _Act 1, Kirk deploys a brain-melting smile and makes a remark witty enough to appeal to the woman’s intelligence but smutty enough to make his intentions plain. Act 2, Kirk engages her in small talk on any of the 1,000 subjects he knows at least a little about, causing her to step up her game and try a little harder than she might have otherwise. Act 3, Kirk moves as close as humanly possible without touching, triggering a well-documented physiological reaction usually expressed as “Does it seem hot in here to you?” Act 4, the niceties of getting out of the bar, including reassuring the woman’s friends that Kirk wasn’t a handsome psychopath._ Here, McCoy could be of some help. He was Nature’s perfect wingman—gentlemanly, a bit older, able to hold his liquor and a conversation, and content to make his way home alone at the end of the evening. By the time they reached the final act, McCoy had long since left the stage.

While the scene was playing out in McCoy’s imagination, Kirk returned, holding the payment chip they’d need to get out the door.

“Well, that was easy. Her name’s Rayel, she’s been in town for eight days and she’s bored out of her mind. And she’s invited us back to her hotel room, so I did your job for you, you’re welcome.”

“Invited us back for what, exactly?”

“Chess. A calculus bee.  _I don’t think_ so. The lady is looking for company. Did I mention she’s extremely bored?”

“I don’t care _how_  bored the lady is. I have no interest in doing…anything with her, especially after you— I can’t believe you’re suggesting that. If you want to— Well, fine. But I’m waiting in the shuttlecraft.” McCoy crossed his arms and tried to look resolute.

“See, that’s exactly why I keyed it to my biometrics,” Kirk said patiently. “There will be no waiting in shuttlecraft, or passive-aggressive sulking. There will be sex, and some of it will involve you, or at least occur in your general vicinity.”

“You can’t make me,” McCoy said, sounding petulant to his own ears.

“What’s that –a challenge? So be it.” Kirk drained his glass and slammed it on the table. “You are going to be in the same room with a naked woman before the night is out or my name isn’t David Santelli.”

“ _Who_?”

“That’s the name I gave her. Easier that way.” Before McCoy could reach out to stop him, Kirk had turned on his heel and gone back to the bar, returning a few moments later with the lady in question who, it turned out, was what his mother would have described as “statuesque.”

“Bones, this is Rayel. She’s a freighter pilot, isn’t that interesting? Rayel, my friend Dr. Leonard McCoy.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” She smiled and gave him her hand; the palm was dry and slightly calloused.

“Aren’t you sweet. You boys must be from that Federation starship that just pulled in.”

“The  _Enterprise_ , yes,” Kirk said unstoppably. “Heading out in the morning.”

“Lucky you. I’m probably stuck another two weeks in this rat trap, thanks to our dickhead captain--pardon my language, doctor. Three weeks to rebuild a hull that never would have corroded in the first place if he hadn’t been such a fucking idiot.” She made a “captains, what can you do?” gesture with her well-manicured hands. “Shall we get out of here? I’d offer to show you around, but this is about as good as it gets. Have you been in that reptoid bar down the street? Hot as hell and full of lizards singing karaoke.”

They gathered their jackets and headed out into the night. At first, the cold, dry air was a relief, but that only lasted a few breaths. After the atmosphere-controlled bar, the dry, oxygen-poor atmosphere was like stepping off an elevator onto a mountain. Rayel and Kirk walked slowly, keeping up a lazy conversation, engines idling. McCoy, feeling third wheel-ish as well as lightheaded, dropped back a few paces, but Kirk waved him forward, wrapping his right arm around McCoy’s neck as he pulled him level, keeping his left around Rayel’s waist. They were not the only little cluster of beings on the wide, dusty street, which had the appearance of a very strange party breaking up.

They reached Rayel’s hotel, an ugly biostone block five stories high, and took the little lift pad at the corner to the third floor.

“It’s not going to be any better than you expect.” she said apologetically, swiping her finger over the keypad and waiting for the double doors to open.

It wasn’t any worse than McCoy expected either, a sparse little apartment furnished in the clumsily generic “Earth” style that reminded McCoy of some sort of human zoo. Rayel made polite but perfunctory noises about drinks and making themselves comfortable. Kirk had already excused himself to the bathroom, presumably to apply the dermal barrier gel McCoy knew he was carrying. McCoy also knew Kirk was on oral contraceptives, having prescribed them himself. The thought made him feel a little like a bodyguard dispatched by Starfleet to guard Kirk’s sexual health, though in fact Kirk had always been responsible on that score. The Adanian pox was one of the few things he could be certain would not kill James Kirk.

“Why don’t you lie down, honey?” Rayel said, rubbing his arm. “You look a little pale.” He nodded and sat down on the small sofa, starting to swing his legs to the right and then stopping halfway when he realized that would create a line of sight directly toward the bed.

Rayel propped a throw pillow against the arm of the sofa and patted it. “Go on, now,” she said gently. “He wants you to watch.” McCoy complied, obedient as a child. His head felt better immediately. She brought him a glass of water, and he decided on the spot to accept the version of events so clearly written on her face: she had brought home two men, decent and safe, one with an innocent kink and the other passive enough not to interfere. She didn’t need to understand more, and for the moment, neither did he. Far easier to lie back, close his eyes and wait out whatever was about to happen than to introspect the subtleties of Jim Kirk’s mind, wondering what mission objective, tomorrow or a year from now, might hinge on McCoy engaging in sex-by-proxy in this drab little room.

Kirk emerged from the bathroom, flashed McCoy a brief smile that told him nothing, and walked toward Rayel, cupping her elbows in his palms and pulling her close. The kiss that followed left McCoy with a curious dissonance; he knew what Kirk’s lips felt like, but these kisses were different, not a seduction but a prelude to something expected, necessary yet predictable as a launch procedure. They undressed each other with the same practiced efficiency, falling into sync so easily that McCoy recognized a familiar alienation that had nothing to do with sex. Here, it was not his unexamined lack of desire alone that made McCoy an outsider.

They were both naked now. Rayel was beautiful, as all women are beautiful. She was wide-shouldered, broad-hipped, and full-breasted, and Kirk spanned her waist with his pale hands, delineating the curves of her body in the dim light. They walked each over to the bed and he sat down first, pulling her into his lap so he could cup and kiss her breasts, and McCoy watched her back arch in pleasure.

He let the strange shifts in perspective play over him like firelight. When Kirk rolled onto the bed with Rayel on top of him, McCoy remembered the soft fullness of his wife’s breasts against his chest. When Kirk knelt between her legs, McCoy felt a twitch of arousal as his cock channeled the memory of Kirk’s mouth, hot and engulfing. But when he entered her with fluid, masculine grace, weight on his arms, hips dipping again and again, making the beautiful woman beneath him moan, McCoy thought,  _How can I not want that?_  He lay there, helpless, like the victim of a curse, a wounded king.

They were both quiet when they came, either by nature or from years of living in close quarters. Kirk threw his head back, eyes open and startlingly blue, mouth parted in a soundless cry, and McCoy felt a pang of something unnamable. Then he lowered himself, already regaining control, onto the woman’s body beneath him, and she wrapped her arms around his waist, willing the pleasure to continue. McCoy was half-hard by this point, cock as muddled and indecisive as his brain. How Kirk’s own had managed against the planet’s low oxygen McCoy didn’t know, except that like the man himself, it was likely used to performing under extreme conditions.

Kirk whispered something to Rayel that made her laugh, rocked his hips a few times before withdrawing, then rolled over onto his back next to her, the two barely fitting in the narrow bed. After a few minutes he rose and, without a glance at McCoy, headed for the bathroom. Rayel lay for a few moments longer with her arm draped across her eyes, then got up and wrapped herself in a thin, grey robe and padded over to McCoy.

Stopping down beside him, she said, “Are you okay, honey?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” Her eyes were bright, and she smelled of sex; he was unsure what else to say to her.

“Listen, you don’t need advice from me. You’re the one who knows him. But in my experience, it’s when he  _stops_  wanting you around that you have to worry. This? This isn’t cheating, unless you turn it into that, and I think you’re too smart. You’d have to be, to keep a man like that.”

“We’re not—“ McCoy began, and stopped.

Rayel waited patiently for a moment, and when McCoy could not find a word, stroked a hand through his hair and said, “You’re very sweet. He’s lucky to have you.” She walked back toward the bed just as Kirk exited the bathroom, unselfconsciously naked, and caught her and kissed her with an easy familiarity that was a wonder and a trouble to McCoy. She frowned a little when he began to get dressed.

“You can’t stay a little longer?”

“No. Our dickhead captain’s expecting us back.” She laughed at that and held his hand as they walked to the door. McCoy levered himself carefully off the sofa, his head staying clear of a hypoxic rush, and grabbed his jacket. He carefully avoided Kirk’s eyes, a hard thing to do in the little space, as if it were he who had something to be embarrassed about, not the man who’d just had sex with a stranger in front of his best friend.

They parted from Rayel at the door. She kissed them each on the lips, McCoy last, briefly clasping his hand and saying, “Take care of yourself.”

They were silent on the walk back to the shuttlecraft. The weather had, of course, not changed, and there was no other topic McCoy felt comfortable introducing. Kirk walked easy and loose-limbed, more physically relaxed than contemplative.

McCoy took the co-pilot’s seat and watched Kirk go through the pre-flight procedures. He was so focused on Kirk’s long fingers moving over the controls that he forgot to have his usual Pavlovian response to the whine of the anti-gravs and barely noticed when the ground dropped away as if they were on an immensely tall ferris wheel. At 3,000 meters, Kirk locked in the return course and the shuttlecraft began to move forward, the inertial dampeners as usual denying McCoy’s body any reference he could make sense of except a gradual widening of the horizon as they moved toward day.

Kirk leaned back in the pilot’s seat, put his hands behind his neck, and said, “So how mad at me are you?”

McCoy thought about that; anger hadn’t been among the responses he’d been considering. “I’m not mad, I don’t think. I just-- I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want you to make the tiniest effort to stop wallowing in your own misery long enough to, I don’t know, enjoy something,” he said flatly.

“What do you mean,  _wallowing_?”

“You got your heart stomped, and you joined the Foreign Legion to forget. I get it,” he said, his jaw setting into a hard line the way it did when he argued with Spock. “But you’re not forgetting. You’re turning it into some kind of fetish, like you’re so fucking enchanted with all this great drama you had in your life that an actual human being can’t possibly compete.”

“I’m sorry,” McCoy said stiffly, “but I’m not you. I was never the kind of guy who wanted anonymous sex with strangers he met in bars.”

“It was not anonymous. There were most definitely names involved.”

McCoy gave him a little twist of a smile. “Yes,  _mine._  The point is, that’s not what I’m looking for. What I’m looking for is—“

“Don’t say ‘love.’”

“Why not? Just because you—“

“Oh, here it comes,” Kirk said, rolling his eyes. “I’ve never been in love so I couldn’t possible understand the glorious misery of blah blah blah. You know what? It’s been almost  _half a decade_  since that woman left you, and it’s like she got your heart  _and_  your balls in the divorce.”

“Some day, when you’ve been in love yourself, you’ll understand.”

“I can’t believe you just said that,” Kirk said in mock amazement. “It’s like dialogue from one of those Andorian telenovelas.”

“It’s the truth, and I do  _not_  watch those.” McCoy folded his arms across his chest, a belated defensive move. “Why do you care so much, anyway?” Kirk was silent for a few moments, checking the instruments and manually adjusting the warp as the shuttlecraft rounded the day side of the planet, heading back into night.

“Because that’s the one thing I can’t promise you. People don’t go into space to find love. There are a lot of things that get in the way, like vast distances and monsters and being in a fucking  _ship_  that  _travels_. But there are so many other things out here that are amazing, and I’m afraid that you’re sleepwalking through the whole experience. That you’re going to miss it.”

“Miss what?”

“ _This_.” Kirk swung the ship in a wide, ascending arc, angling down on the return so that the nose of the shuttle tilted down toward the planet. The system’s star was rising over the edge of the world, radiating knives of brilliance over the barren planet. Cloudless and featureless, lacking water to sustain more than the little spaceport, it looked untouched and primordial. Around them, however, clustered spacecraft of all shapes and sizes, some connected to the dock, others at anchor. A line of smaller craft trailed away to the planet’s surface, weaving around each other like silver fireflies. And almost at the edge of their vision, directly overhead, hung the  _Enterprise_ , gleaming white, her shape already signifying home more truly than the sphere of the alien world below.

McCoy knew what Kirk wanted him to say. He didn’t even need to say it; a few words from him would likely unleash one of Kirk’s infrequent, spooky soliloquies on the dangerous beauty of space. He didn’t say them. Instead, he asked, “Who was David Santelli?”

Kirk glanced at him sharply, then looked back at the viewscreen. “A kid I went to high school with. He died in a harvester accident senior year.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Not really. I just like the name David.”

“And using his name when you fuck strangers—that’s supposed to be what, a tribute?”

“Being captain…it’s not what I  _do_ , it’s what I  _am_. I can’t—“ he struggled for words. “I can’t ever walk away from it. Not that I want to. But it’s not who I want to be when I’m in bed with someone.”

“Who do you want to be, then? A kid who never left Iowa?”

Kirk tensed a bit and he frowned, focus turned inward as if searching for an answer. But then his eyes drifting upward to where the  _Enterprise_  hung like a white ghost, and his lips curved into a smile as he reached for the thruster controls.

“Let’s go home.”

+++++

 

As the months passed, they began to categorize their successes; there were enough that they could not be easily remembered with a word or name. There were diplomatic missions, border skirmishes, first contacts, and a few that so thoroughly defied categorization, not to mention McCoy’s experience, that he didn’t try. There were a few failures, none serious, and fewer still resulting in loss of life. In less than a year, the  _Enterprise_  and its young captain had gone from risky long shot to reliable miracle worker. Scotty joked that they were sent on everything except the admirals’ laundry runs.

Kirk shouldered the ridiculously high expectations without losing energy or enthusiasm. McCoy watched him closely, because it was his job and he couldn’t have done otherwise, and saw no signs of stress or premature aging. Kirk was doing what he was born to do, and he carried his burden lightly, growing in experience but not  _gravitas_.

So it had continued until Delta Cordria. Superficially, the mission was a shockingly easy success. Admiral Pike had called it a “hole in one,” and shown no remorse about assigning the  _Enterprise_  to ferry two hundred Federation delegates to a sector-wide trade conference immediately afterward. Yet there was no doubt in McCoy’s mind that some change had come over Kirk in the fewer than twelve hours they had spent planetside.

Again and again he rolled the events over in his mind. The homeworld of a closed system, Delta Cordria had refused all contact with outworlders until the Romulans had begun impinging on their territory. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had made up the small landing party charged with convincing the Cordrians to accept a larger and more permanent cultural and scientific mission. They had gone unarmed and unbriefed by Starfleet, which had little information to offer, since the only other mission, thirty years earlier, had been summarily ejected from the planet.

The Cordrians, a tall, dour people, had demanded that Kirk, as their leader, submit to a mind probe with a device they were assured was harmless. McCoy had watched with trepidation as Kirk walked into a high-ceilinged chamber filled with what looked like luminous spider webs. He had emerged less than an hour later, pale and a bit shaky but apparently unharmed, complaining of nothing worse than a headache. The Cordrians had hailed their new allies and welcomed a contingent of Federation liaisons, who beamed down immediately.

McCoy and Spock had asked, repeatedly, about the exact nature of the mind probe, but Kirk had been vague, other than to say it had tested, by way of a simulation, his commitment and that of the Federation to the interests and security of Delta Cordria. But in the days that followed he had been uncharacteristically subdued, as if the edge of his enthusiasm had been blunted by some hard instrument. McCoy could fault nothing in his performance; he charmed the trade delegates, fulfilled his duties unstintingly, put in his by now traditional appearances sparring with Sulu in the gym or playing chess with Spock in the aft lounge. McCoy was left with nothing except intuition. Whether it was a doctor's or a friend's, he couldn't have said.

Two days after they had picked up the last of the Federation delegates, eight days after Delta Cordria, McCoy buttonholed Spock in the corridor after a senior staff meeting.

“Spock, have you noticed anything…different about the captain since the last mission?”

“I am afraid you will have to be more specific.” Spock clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head, a gesture McCoy generally found patronizing.

“I would if I could. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s as if he’s—subdued? Maybe brooding about something that happened down there?”

Spock angled his body slightly toward McCoy. “Do you have evidence that he suffered some sort of mental damage from the Cordrian mind probe?”

“No, his brain scans were normal.”

“Then have you observed any changes in his behavior that might affect his fitness for command?”

“Of course not.” McCoy began to bristle, aware that he was falling into one of Spock’s Socratic sand traps but helpless to do anything about it.

“I see. Then are you basing your supposition on information that you uniquely possess, as a medical officer with access to the captain’s psychological profile?” McCoy could have sworn that Spock was smirking.

“No,” he said testily, “I’m basing it on information that I possess as his friend, something that can’t be reduced to brain scans or equations. Something you clearly don’t understand.”

Spock looked at a point just to the left of McCoy’s ear, face more impassive than usual. “Perhaps it is simply that I have a different way of honoring friendship--in this case, by refraining from baseless speculation about the captain’s mental state, something I can assure you, as his  _friend_ , he finds quite irritating. Good day, doctor.”

\+ + + + +

It took McCoy fewer than five minutes to decide that Spock was full of crap, but more than fourteen hours to find Kirk alone in his quarters. He waited—cleverly, he thought—long enough after the door closed that Kirk would not think he had been hovering, but not long enough for even an exhausted man to fall asleep.

Kirk answered the door in his dress uniform trousers and undershirt. He looked ordinarily tired but not in the throes of any type of mental distress.

“Ah. Bones.” he said. “Are you here to tell me one of the delegates broke a nail? Or maybe the stir fry didn’t agree with someone?”

“No.” He leaned against the door frame, hands in his pockets. “As far as I know, all the delegates are healthy as horses and perfectly capable of complaining on their own if they need to.”

“Good. That’s good.” Kirk ruffled his hair, a bit abstracted. “Well, come in, then, I guess.”

“Have they been running you ragged?”

“If I have to explain warp drive to one more farmer, I may have to reroute us through the Neutral Zone just to relieve the boredom.” He gestured toward the small galley. “Drink?”

“A beer if you’ve got one.” McCoy glanced around the room while Kirk fetched him a glass. The stateroom was spacious by ship's standards but not luxurious, Starfleet having strict ideas on aggrandizement of its captains. There were two rooms, a bedroom and a living area, divided by a transparent aluminum panel that could be darkened on command. The living area’s main attraction was a display screen filling the whole of the aft wall, a larger version of the one in all crew quarters. McCoy knew it was designed to show scenic panoramas as well as the ship’s vid library, but whenever he visited it was showing telemetry data, the main status panels, and a half dozen or so Federation news feeds. Above the desk hung an oil painting of old sailing ships, a gift from Admiral Pike, and near the door, a holo of unknown provenance showing San Francisco Bay. Of Kirk’s former life there was not even a photograph, and he had acquired little in the months he’d been on board.

Kirk handed him the beer and gestured to one of the comfortable armchairs in front of the screen.

“So are you here to talk, or to ‘talk’?” he asked, dropping into the other chair, drinkless. “If it’s the latter, you should know that Spock’s been here ahead of you.”

“Spock?” McCoy said, annoyed. “What did he want to ‘talk’ about?”

“He wanted me to tell him more about what happened on Delta Cordria. Offered to mind meld with me, if you can believe it. If it was too difficult for me to talk about.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“That pointy-eared—“ McCoy halted abruptly, mid-rant. “Did you do it?”

“No, and I told him I’d have a much easier time believing it’s one of those Vulcan Things Of Which We Do Not Speak if he didn’t suggest it every five minutes.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “If you want me to talk you’re going to have to make me a more exotic offer than that.”

“I’d suggest Centaurian slugs, but I’m fresh out.” It was a poor joke at best; Kirk didn’t seem to register it. “You know there’s nothing you can’t tell me. I’m not asking out of curiosity. It’s just that you have a screwy sense of what’s important sometimes. And I don’t mean to the ship.”

“Of course you’d have to put it that way,” Kirk sighed. “All right. But you have to promise not to get angry.”

“Remember who you’re talking to,” McCoy said, getting him to at least crack a smile. Kirk propped his long legs up on the coffee table and focused his attention on the ever-changing display. McCoy took a gulp of beer and looked away, letting him gather his thoughts.

After a few minutes of brooding silence, Kirk slumped down in his chair, folded his hands across his stomach, and said, “I’ve always known I’ll die alone.”

McCoy felt a thrill of superstitious fear go down his spine. “My god, man, don’t  _say_  things like that.”

“Sorry,” Kirk said unapologetically, still staring straight ahead. “I don’t mean that in a spooky, prophetic way. I mean that I’ve always known that if I did my job right, I could go out without taking anyone with me, and I’d have no regrets. Now I have factual, corroborating evidence even Spock would be satisfied with.”

“The mind probe?” McCoy guessed.

Kirk gave a twisted half-smile. “Very clever, those Cordrians. They wanted to know I represented the kind of people who would sacrifice whatever was needed to protect them, if it ever came to that. Of course just  _saying_  that I would wouldn’t be good enough. So they tested me. That mind probe thing simulated dozens of scenarios where they methodically went through every thing that I might ever be asked to give up. My life. My health. My physical comfort. Various limbs.”

“That’s  _horrible_ , Jim,” McCoy said, appalled.

“Oh, it gets better. When they didn’t make any headway with those, they started on the less obvious things—my career, my ship, the respect of my colleagues. My friends. And they didn’t just  _ask_  me if I’d be willing to sacrifice them, they showed me. I got to experience it. To know what it would really feel like to have everything taken away.”

“That’s nothing short of torture! It’s barbaric.”

“I disagree,” Kirk said tightly. “It’s a very practical way to gauge the commitment of your allies. Not particularly pleasant, but effective. And as a bonus, I got some very interesting insights.”

“Like what?” McCoy asked warily.

“Giving your life for your fellow man is easy,” Kirk said, almost off-handedly. “It’s losing everything and  _still being alive_  that’s hard. And it’s very, very possible. Not the way they showed me, which was some crazy scenario about being put on trial and sent to a prison colony. It doesn’t have to be anything so dramatic. I could make an enemy at Starfleet Command. I could take the fall for somebody else’s screw-up. I could get kicked upstairs.”

He shifted, sinking deeper into his chair. “But you know what? Even if none of those things happen, the day will come when I can’t do this anymore. I’ll be too old, too tired, too compromised in one way or another, and I’ll have to stop. They’ll give me some medals and put me behind a desk somewhere. If I do everything right, if I’m  _successful_ , that’s what I have to look forward to.” His voice grew very soft, and McCoy watched his eyes, scanning minutely as if they could find the answers they were seeking in the shifting rows of numbers from the heart of the  _Enterprise_. “Bones, without this, who am I?”

McCoy felt the answer well up in him with such force that he was temporarily mute, the urge for physical contact so strong that he had to tense his muscles to repress it. “You’re the most remarkable man I’ve ever met. But you’re also a human being. Everyone faces that question sooner or later, just usually not when they’re 26.”

“Well, everyone’s always telling me I’m precocious.” Kirk leaned forward abruptly, elbows on knees, hands fisting at his temples. “I guess it’s best to know these things now. I’ll have to send the Cordrians a thank-you note.” The slight break in his voice was like a knife to McCoy’s heart. For once in his life he knew what to do with unerring certainty.

“So you’re going through an artificial midlife crisis because a bunch of aliens poked around in your head looking for things that would make you feel like shit.” McCoy worked his way up to the strong trapezius muscles, running his thumbs along them, releasing the tension. “I’m not going to say right now what I think about Starfleet putting you in that position, or you deciding not to tell your friends about it, let alone your CMO. But I  _will_  remind you of what you’re always reminding me: the future isn’t written in stone. The Jim Kirk you think they saw in your head doesn’t exist yet. You may feel like it’s your destiny to die alone, but that doesn’t mean you have to live alone. Everyone has choices, even starship captains.” He was stroking his thumbs across the tender skin at the base of Kirk’s skull, letting the tickle of short hairs distract him from saying what was very close to the surface now. In fairness to Kirk, and for his own self-protection, he couldn’t make an offer when Kirk was so vulnerable, so predisposed to reach for a solution if one presented itself.

However little help McCoy had been with existential questions, Kirk at least seemed more relaxed. He leaned back, resting his head lightly against McCoy’s sternum, letting him slide his hands over Kirk’s shoulders to work on his pectoral muscles.

“Choices.” Kirk gave a mirthless huff. “It’s  _other_  people’s choices that I don’t control. And when they’re given a choice, I’m usually pretty far down on the priority list.” McCoy winced, unseen. He knew instantly what Kirk was talking about. It was as close as he’d ever come to complaining about the pattern of abandonment that McCoy supposed had set him on his solitary course in life. McCoy considered his words very, very carefully. He was not a risk-taker by nature, feared rejection perhaps as much as Kirk feared failure. He wanted to tell his friend what he needed to hear without conferring a sense of obligation.

After a few moments, he slipped one hand down to cover Kirk’s heart, let the other stroke the hair back from his forehead, and said, “You know, in case I never mentioned it, I hate spaceships.” It didn’t take long for the message to be received; this was Kirk, after all. His head turned suddenly under McCoy’s hand, and he looked up at him with an incredulous expression.

“Really!” he exclaimed. “Then I’ve been wasting a lot of credits sending drinks to women’s tables and saying they were from you.” He caught the hand still resting on his chest, native energy restored, and rose turning to face McCoy. “I’d chew you out for suffering in silence, but you probably enjoyed that.”

“I haven’t been suffering,” McCoy said smiling, almost weak with relief. “I didn’t let myself think about it, not consciously, anyway. Might as well set your sights on the Moon.”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Kirk said, squeezing his hand a little, “we’ve been to the Moon. A couple dozen of them, in fact.”

“And do they all look the same after a while?” McCoy asked.

“That’s a conversation for another time,” Kirk said. “I don’t want to talk about other…moons right now.” He was as close to flustered as McCoy had ever seen him, looking at him with such obvious affection that McCoy couldn’t help laughing himself, feeling weightless, feeling the rush of air as doors opened to possibilities.

He expected Kirk to take control now. He didn’t. He waited, not quite with patience but with forbearance, as McCoy laid a hand against his cheek and leaned in to kiss him softly. His lips parted easily, without urgency, full and warm against McCoy’s own. They kissed for a few long moments, McCoy acclimating himself to the closeness of Kirk’s body like a swimmer to the water, the heat, the shape and mass of it, the scent of his skin.

Kirk pulled a few inches away, still so close McCoy could feel his breath. He ran his fingers lightly through McCoy’s hair, looking at his face so intently McCoy began to feel embarrassed, and said, “You have the strangest eyes. I can never tell whether they’re light or dark.”

“What are they now?” McCoy’s voice was husky in spite of himself.

“Dark. Very dark.” Kirk’s lips were moving toward his again when a sudden burst of light startled McCoy into breaking contact. Kirk laughed softly and glanced at the display panel. “Plasma manifold purge set off an alarm cascade. How’s that for timing? Jealous bitch.” __

“Can’t you turn that damn thing off?” __

“I’ve got a better idea.” Kirk had not released his hand; he nodded his head toward the open door to the bedroom, but didn’t move. A little uncertainly, McCoy took the lead, pulling Kirk, quite unresisting, into the darkened room.

+++++

“Lights 40 percent,” Kirk said quietly. McCoy could remember being in this bedroom only once before, when Kirk had given him a tour in their early days on board. The bed was larger than standard issue, though not so large as to suggest the ‘Fleet endorsed its regular use by more than one person. Above it hung a metal-and-glass weaving McCoy hectored him into buying on Rigel IV.

McCoy drew him into his arms, holding him tightly enough to feel the sharp edges of his shoulder blades, feeling his heart beating through two layers of fabric. Kirk rested his head on McCoy’s shoulder, and for a moment McCoy thought that it might be enough, to hold him for a while, perhaps while he slept. But he could feel Kirk’s body grow restless in his arms, and knew that words meant little to Kirk without actions, and that there was a language that Kirk understood better than any other, that McCoy, so long out of practice, could finally speak if he chose.

They drew apart, and McCoy ran his hands down Kirk’s undershirt, tugged lightly on the hem. Kirk took the hint and pulled it off, dropping it on the floor. McCoy reached for the fastener of Kirk’s pants, glancing briefly at his face to make sure it was all right. With the fly open and both his hands at Kirk’s waist there was no choice but to let his hand slip into that warmth, to feel him, hot and taut inside the constraining layer of fabric. Kirk gave a little gasp, and his eyes fluttered closed, letting McCoy squeeze him gently a few times before sliding the top of his pants down over his narrow hips. Slipping out of McCoy’s grasp, he sat down on the edge of the bed and finished shucking his boots and pants. Cocking his head, a familiar little half-smile on his face, he said, “Why don’t you take off your clothes?”

McCoy felt a flush of heat go down his body. It was some kind of alchemy, the way Kirk could eroticize something so ordinary with a few words. He pulled his shirts off slowly, not by way of performance but because his skin already felt so sensitive it would have been torture to do otherwise. Kirk’s eyes, heated and intensely blue, followed his fingers as he unfastened his trousers, letting them slip to his knees. He watched with gentle amusement as McCoy, awkward with arousal, struggled to get out of everything, briefs sliding off last, seeming to tug at every hair. Kirk looked him up and down with almost proprietary approval.

“You’re totally different with your clothes off. Shit, you’re good-looking.” He bit his lip, considering, and said after a pause, “Will you touch yourself? For me?”

McCoy could only nod slightly, mute with arousal. He had never felt comfortable naked, but now he felt clothed in Kirk’s desire. He ran his hands down his chest, over his nipples, along the flat planes of his sides and belly. He approached his cock cautiously, half afraid he would come from a single touch, but it felt good, so good, to stroke himself slowly like this, his eyes locked on Kirk’s, sensing his own arousal mirrored in Kirk’s body.

Eyes never leaving his, Kirk slid off his briefs so McCoy could see the effect he was having on him. His erection was beautiful, long and pale, curving slightly upward. He leaned back on the bed, legs spread, touchingly uncertain, as if he were in an alien place with no map to his own desires.

Here, at least, McCoy could help him navigate. The need for touch, companionship, belonging, were all things McCoy understood. He knelt down between Kirk’s legs, stroking his long thighs, massaging a little down the lean quads and then running his fingertips lightly down the sensitive skin of his inner thighs. Kirk shivered and opened a little more, and McCoy leaned forward to kiss the flesh he had just touched, nipping it lightly, feeling the fine texture of it with his lips and tongue. The muscles twitched slightly, involuntarily, under his mouth, and it was easy to imagine how sensitive his cock would be by now. Not wanting to tease, and needing to prove nothing, he placed his right hand firmly around Kirk’s balls, circled his cock lightly with the left, and took the head into his mouth.

Kirk gave a startled “aaah” and arched his back, struggling not to move his hips or force his cock any deeper. McCoy squeezed the shaft a few times to ground and deepen the sensation and Kirk sagged, weight against his arms, eyes squeezed tightly shut. Kirk shifted his weight forward enough to free a hand and brushed it through McCoy’s hair, massaging his scalp in encouragement.

McCoy felt as if he could float forever in this bubble of time, his friend relaxed and aroused, the evidence of his trust soft and hard under his hands and mouth. There was more than enough time to trace the contours of his cockhead with his tongue, run his hand lightly up and down the shaft, learning its shape and contours like a new country. But Kirk was an arrow, a vector; he began to shift minutely, to come awake, and McCoy mentally prepared to shift his goal.

Instead, Kirk pressed his head back gently, urging him to disengage. “That feels so, so good,” he whispered. “But I have another idea.”

He leaned over and tapped the storage compartment under the nightstand. It slid open quietly, and he reached into the dark interior and pulled out something small and square. Taking one of McCoy’s hands in his own, he pressed the small object into it, then closed his hand over it and squeezed, as if sealing a bargain. When Kirk drew his hand back to McCoy’s wrist, he saw a container with some kind of clear liquid, alien writing on the outside.

“What is it?” he asked, puzzled.

“Some lube I bought on Zaran II. The guy in the store didn’t speak Standard. It was fun trying to explain to him what I wanted.” McCoy stared at as if it were a key to an unknown door.

Kirk leaned in toward his ear and whispered, “I want you to fuck me.”

“Jim!” He stared at Kirk in astonishment as a surge of heat went through him; he thought he might even be blushing.

“You don’t want to?” Kirk looked genuinely uncertain, as if it were an offer a reasonable person might refuse. It was so exactly like Kirk to give everything he had, unasked. There was no question of trust, because he was always prepared to be hurt, only knew from intuition that these breathtaking acts of generosity were sometimes rewarded. Some other time, McCoy thought, he would consider how such impulses might have developed in a lonely boy. For now, there was only one answer. He closed his other hand over Kirk’s and said. “Of course I do, Jim. Very much.”

McCoy contemplated the act before him with the seriousness of a delicate surgery. He understood anatomy, of course; was familiar with the basic mechanics from experiments, not always successful, in his married life and before. He was sure he could receive Kirk’s gift, and with any luck give him pleasure; if there were more Kirk wanted from it, he would have to trust Kirk to let him know.

Seeing him lying there, vulnerable and expectant, a bitter thought occurred to him.

“Jim, I’m sorry to bring this up, but did the Cordrians…” he couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Were any of their scenarios sexual? No.” McCoy spent a long moment rolling the  implications of that over in his mind. Kirk reached out a hand and grasped his wrist, bracing and focusing him, the way he did on the bridge before they headed into action.

“I want this. I’m not aware of any fucked-up motivations, or I wouldn’t be asking for it.” He rubbed McCoy’s forearm a few times, up and down. “I’m not a martyr, or a masochist. You’re not going to hurt me, I promise.”

McCoy nodded, and reached out a hand to touch Kirk’s skin. He stroked across his chest and down his side, feeling the contours of his body, hard and flat and male. He was lean almost to the point of thinness; in his body as in his life, there was nothing superfluous to its purpose. Kirk’s eyelids drifted half-closed under the rhythmic touch, and McCoy let his fingers glide lower, over his flat abdomen and down his thighs.

When he was sure that Kirk was thoroughly relaxed, he uncapped the little alien bottle and poured some of its viscous contents into his right palm, waiting a few moments for it to warm and then dipping his fingers in it. With his right hand he circled the base of Kirk’s cock and slowly slid it up the shaft, feeling a shudder go through his body as a slit of blue appeared beneath his eyelashes. He slipped his left hand under Kirk’s thigh and traced a line from the base of his balls backward, feeling the swell of buttocks. He brushed lightly back and forth, his other doing the same to Kirk’s cock with easy, lazy, strokes. Kirk gasped with pleasure, shifting his hips fractionally, one arm thrown over his head, his face still and beautiful.

Spellbound, McCoy moved a finger carefully into position and pressed, using only the lightest pressure to slide it past the ring of muscle. The sensation of being engulfed, the sudden heat and softness, were shockingly intimate. He met Kirk’s eyes in surprise, amazed by his own boldness; Kirk gave him a shadow of his familiar grin and said, “It’s good. Don’t stop.”

He didn’t. He slid his finger deeper, his mind alternately confident in its knowledge and incredulous at his actions. Kirk made a soft, strangled noise and clutched at the bedspread.

“Holy shit,” he hissed.

“Good? Not good?”

“Very good,” Kirk said, relaxing his grip as if by will. “Any better and I may pass out.”

As he moved he watched Kirk’s face change. It was like playing a delicate instrument, a subtle and complex shift of sensation and emotion. McCoy’s focus was intent and total, his own arousal a distant hum of background noise. If he had done nothing more it would have been almost wholly satisfying, but that was not what Kirk had asked him to do, and he was determined to follow orders.

He withdrew his finger, sympathizing with Kirk’s little sigh of disappointment. He gripped his cock at the base and found it almost painfully hard, as if it had been having a parallel experience while his mind was otherwise engaged. He used it to massage the same place where his finger had just been, not seeking or demanding entrance, simply enjoying the sensation.

Kirk’s eyes were open now, and he reached out a hand to brush the hair back from McCoy’s face, stroke his cheek. With his other hand he lightly gripped below the head of McCoy’s cock and guided it, exerting pressure that McCoy could not have dared use. A moment’s impossible pressure and it went in, sensation surging from his cock up his spine, flashing him back into a memory of the first time he had penetrated anyone, the internal howl of triumph followed by the profound realization that he was  _inside_  another person.

He froze and squeezed his eyes closed, imploring himself not to come. A moment later he remembered to look at Kirk, whose face showed only deep satisfaction. His hands slid up to McCoy’s shoulders and pulled them toward him, causing McCoy to slide further in, millimeter by millimeter, as if his whole body was a mere extension of his cock. Kirk’s lips were parted, and his eyes never left McCoy’s, letting him see the minute progress of every sensation.

He was almost buried inside him now, arms shaking, the impossible tightness causing him to feel a pulse that might have been his own or Kirk’s. Kirk slid his hands up his sweat-slicked back and into his hair, pulling his head down, capturing his mouth. It was strange that a kiss could feel even more intimate, now; but he traced the inside of Kirk’s mouth with his tongue, wanting to know every part of him. He thought that it was impossible to tend a body, day in and day out, for so many years without growing to love it; that he loved Kirk’s body the way Kirk loved the  _Enterprise_ , the thing he protected and was protected by. He knew he loved his friend, and thought that he must love him back in whatever way he was able; hoped it included something at least a little greedy or selfish, something beyond loyalty and sacrifice.

He released Kirk’s mouth only so he could look at his face, and was rewarded with a pure, sweet smile that was somehow still enigmatic. There would be time, later, to sort out the implications of what they were doing and what he was getting from it. Now, Kirk’s erection, trapped between them, twitched against his belly, recalling his attention. He reached down to grasp it, felt a shock go through Kirk’s body, which tightened around him, closing the circuit and making the current flow. There was no need to move, or thrust; everything they needed, they had between them. A grip of his hand, a tilt of his hips, a shift of intention and Kirk was coming, head thrown back, crying out in pleasure as his body tightened around McCoy, the most imperative command he had ever received. As he started to come he felt Kirk jet hot across his belly, felt the pressure of hands at his hips urging him down, and it was so exactly like falling that McCoy reached out a hand to brace himself before he actually  _screamed_ , losing everything at once.

He came to with his chest flat against Kirk’s, heart hammering. Kirk clasped him a little tighter, rubbing his back, and said, “You OK?”

“No.” He shifted a little, trying to gather his scattered wits, thinking he should withdraw.

“Don’t just yet,” Kirk said, placing a staying hand on his hip.

McCoy relaxed a little, trying to shift some of his weight to his arms. “What about you?”

“I’m great. Just great.” He continued the light stroking. McCoy felt himself soften, his body in retreat. After a few minutes he gave Kirk an apologetic kiss and began to withdraw regretfully.

He slid off Kirk just to his side, placing a hand on his belly, the intimacy already so familiar it needed no thought. “How are you really? If you’re sore, I’ve got a dermal regenerator.”

“You brought a  _dermal regenerator_?” Kirk’s voice was soft and teasing, surprisingly normal. “What did you think we’d be doing?”

“I  _always_  have a dermal regenerator. I thought we’d be talking.”

“Oh,  _talking_.” He gave McCoy a little pinch in the soft flesh at his waist. “I can feel it, but in a good way. It’ll give me something to think about at breakfast tomorrow besides triticale futures.”

McCoy rubbed a hand over his face, trying to compose himself. “Breakfast. Do you need me to leave? What time is it?”

“Why would I want you to leave?” Kirk pulled him tighter against his chest.

“I don’t know. It might be awkward if—“

“You think Spock brings me milk and cookies or something? What we’re doing isn’t against regs, and beyond that I don’t care. I grew up in a gossipy small town and I’ll be damned if I let my ship turn into one.” McCoy nodded, letting his head fall to Kirk’s shoulder. He was starting the slide into sleep when Kirk shifted a little against him, and he felt a rapidly cooling slickness.

“ _That_ , on the other hand, could be seriously distracting if either of us has to bolt out of here in the middle of the night.” Kirk rolled off the bed and ambled into the bathroom, returning a minute later with a damp cloth, which he used to clean up McCoy with a matter-of-factness McCoy, in his pliant state, found touching. “Do you need anything? Glass of water? Clean underwear?”

“I need to know that you’re feeling better,” McCoy said. “That this wasn’t all for my benefit.”

Kirk’s expression softened. “I am. I’m sorry, I thought that was obvious.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell with you.”

Kirk tossed the cloth on the floor, scrambled back onto the bed, and thumped down on his back, looking at the ceiling. “I don’t know what kind of boyfriend I’d be,” he said. “A pig, probably.”

“I very much doubt it. But I’m not asking you for that anyway.”

“You shouldn’t  _have_  to ask.” Kirk’s brow creased. “I think I’m probably best in small doses, like arsenic.” He shifted enough to pull the bedspread off his side of the bed, gesturing to McCoy to do the same.

“Is this the ‘you deserve someone better than me’ speech?” McCoy asked gruffly. “Save it for someone who hasn’t been with you every day for four years.”

“There was that week you spent in Singapore at that conference.” Kirk pulled the covers down, choosing a pillow and pushing the other toward McCoy.

“Dullest week of my life.” That got a smile out of Kirk, which made McCoy smile, too. “Jim, I don’t want to be another thing you have to manage. If something’s going to come out of this, then it will. It should be easy. If it isn’t, we’re doing it wrong.”

“Ah,” Kirk said pensively, “then sticking your dick up my ass was a metaphor of some kind.” McCoy rolled his eyes, too lazy to pick up the pillow and hit him.

“Being sarcastic in bed is just one of my bad habits. When I can’t sleep, I listen to the low-priority subspace channel, and when I  _really_  can’t sleep, I have late-night card-games and I let the engineers smoke cigars. I average five hours of sleep a night if I’m lucky, and in any of those hours I’m likely to be called to the bridge. I mumble stellar coordinates in my sleep. Or so I’ve been told.”

“In other words,” McCoy said, pushing his legs down into the cool recesses of the bed, “you’re a starship captain.”

“Yes,” Kirk said, pulling the covers over them both. “That’s what I am.”


End file.
